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Getting Back in the Arena

Do you blog, or are you thinking about getting started? If not, you can ignore this, but if so, I just saw a really useful link on getting your blog posts out there where more people will see them. Here's my take on the six steps:

Splinter

These are good rules of thumb on the types of content you can pull out of your blog post and use on your other New Media nodes to entice people to read your full post on your site. I've thought of most of these, but not all... and I certainly haven't practiced this as well as I could have.

Visualize

I wrote extensively in New Media for Designers + Builders on how important it is to use images in everything you put out there. But just like the Splinter section, they have a couple methods I've never considered until now.

Broadcast

This section is too sophisticated for me. If you want to do some serious Google Analytics, follow the instructions here. I'm simpler than that... I have Google Analytics on all my sites, but because I'm an architect, urbanist, author, and photographer but not really a marketer, looking at the analytics is occasionally amusing, but not something I spend much time with.

Tag

This is one that more of us are doing more of the time: using hashtags and usernames to draw more people into the conversation. Have a look, but you're probably doing a lot of this already.

Monitor

You can only monitor the effects of a link if you've tagged it somehow. The easiest way is with bit.ly links, which I've found very useful because you can quickly see what resonates with people.

Schedule

Most blog posts get good traffic for a couple days then drop off. There's a new idea that extends their life: re-splinter your best posts every few weeks or months to get more readers. This link's author uses MeetEdgar.com, which auto-selects your most popular posts for re-splintering. Meet Edgar annoyed me because you have to get an invitation before they'll tell you their pricing. Turns out it's $49/month for a starter plan. It seems like a lot of money, but if it saved me an hour per month, it would easily pay for itself. I may eventually break down and do it.

There's another way to schedule as well, but it's a one-time thing. Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns fame put me on to this a couple years ago. Buffer.com lets you post things any time of day, and it'll delay the post until a time that's known for good readership. For example, you can put some stuff up at night after the end of a long day, but few people would see it. But if you Buffer it, it'll be released at the time(s) you've preselected the next day, when there are lots of potential readers online. It's $9.95/month, and well worth it.